06/15/2026
Well it took me a little longer to get there than originally planned, but thats ok because other things were progressing!!
WE FINALLY COMPLETED THE REORG OF OUR BREEDERS!
It will be a minimum of 3 weeks before we even start thinking about testing fertility in our heavily changed pens. Likely I will wait a month at least.
All pens had changes big enough to require a full pause on hatching eggs. Here is a run down of where we were and where we are going for fall of this year/spring of next year.
Camp Egg- previously our Dark/Chocolate Egger Pen is now......🥁..... our Black Copper Marans/French Black Copper Marans/F1 and multigen Olive Egger/BC1 Olive Egger Pen. This pen got a new French Black Copper Marans rooster as well as some Ameraucana hens and has F1 grow outs for those future back crossed chicks (who knows maybe there will be F2 pen in the future cough cough). Will we be continuing to refine this pen for French birds!
Camp Forest- Remains our Speckled Green/Olive pen. There were a few refinements made to the hens in this pen and quite a few grow outs from our hatches earlier in the year added. This pen will remain focused on welsummer over blue and green o/o hens, however we will be doing some backcrossing in this pen this fall! Super excited for BC1 Speckled Green/Olives out of this pen.
Camp Blue will remain our BBS Ameraucana pen driven more towards SOP than any of our other pens (at least for now). I will say this pen got a rooster switch out but it is a blue to blue swap. Something special I am doing here, I have a beautiful backcross to ameraucana splash green egger, so technically a BC1, she went into camp blue so I can test out some BC2 with her. I also have a splash hen that lays very pretty bloomed brown (pink) egg that I have moved into this pen as well. I am excited to see the level of green and if she will produce BBS chicks. I may put some F1 olives in here to make some BC1 to ameracuana, it would be either here or in Camp Buff.
Camp Cluck will remain our Orpington Cross pen for now. Tollhouse one of silver laced chocolate orpingtons will remain the sire with a flock of different colored hens. This will now be purely an orpington pen as the starlight green eggers and that BC1 hen were moved to their new homes.
Camp Buff aka Fun Pen Ameraucanas- this pen got a little bit of a mix up! With a buff ameraucana rooster and his ameraucana hens, we added a couple of the extra marans hens from the old camp egg so guess what that means...... more green eggers and F1 olive eggers woop woop!
NOW FOR THE NEW PENS!!!
Camp Gold and Green- this pen is focused on Golden Cuckoo & Cuckoo Marans/French Golden Cuckoo & Cuckcoo Marans. Super excited for this sire and his girls to move to their own pen! We will also be moving towards this pen becoming a french only pen. This is also the home to OUR FIRST PURE BRED DUCK breeding pen and guess what we put in there.........dramatic pause......CAYUGAS!!!!
Camp Fluffernugget- Ive shared a lot of this sweet rooster. He got injured several months ago and had to get pulled from the flock, unfortunetly this made it very hard to integrate him back into any of the active groups and being the sweet boy he is, has has been raising grow outs all this time. Honestly he has raised some of the nicest little cockrels too so it worked out all the way around.
So he is finally getting his own ladies to love and protect.
This pen will be focused on SILVER LACED CHOCOLATE ORPINGTONS!!!! I am super excited for this pen not only is King Fluffernugget the best rooster ever, but I have completely fallen in love with this breed as a whole but the SLC are my favorite!!! Also I have another special project going on in this pen..... I am crossing him with 2 specific starlight green eggers. 1 I would like to see what level of green the eggs will be next generation. 2 if I will be able to preserve the lacing from both side and 3 what size the offspring average.
We have plans for a couple more groups to get parsed out or established over the summer and the fall as we continue to refine the reorg and we continue to watch our grow outs.
For all of you that have been waiting, patiently, I deeply appreciate you and your grace. I have a list of names to go through of people who have been waiting for birds, if any are available after I make it through the names I already have then I will make a post.
I did go through all the brooders today and have some birds available from there too. I want to make sure none of the grow outs that went from inside to outside have a hard time with the heat before I let them go to new homes. Its a lot of stress to move around but also temperature stress on little ones this time of year. I would rather make sure to sell strong and hardy birds to all of you. Long story short, I will be waiting a couple days before I offer whats available in this age range to anyone.
Finally time for bed.
Pic is of a grow out rooster that is super sweet and we let him roam the main yard from time to time he decided to go for a relaxing nap in the hammock.
